California’s Energy Choices
* I can’t help but view all this talk about an “energy crisis” and an electricity shortage with an air of skepticism. Apparently there’s still plenty of electricity for everybody.
All those billboard monstrosities that have been sprouting up like mushrooms along our freeways are always illuminated at night. Couldn’t that precious electricity be put to better use? Energy could be conserved by shutting down television transmitters in the wee hours of the morning. The only things that seem to be on at 3 a.m. are those stupid infomercials trying to sell me something I don’t want. We should also shut down the printing presses that stuff my mailbox with unwanted junk mail. That should save quite a bit of electricity and some trees, too.
When someone is trying to sell me something I don’t want, and they’re using electricity to do so, can they really make a case of it being an “essential service”? I’d like to see them try.
DAVID ARTHUR
Colton
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* I find it revealing that “Conservation Sandbags” (editorial, April 29) neglected to mention the factor most effective in promoting power conservation--price. Higher prices, because they are painful, do more to inform Californians about the seriousness of the power crisis than all of the windy proclamations of Gov. Gray Davis and high-toned newspaper editors combined. That’s basic Economics 101.
CARL MOORE
Lomita
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* Our politicians don’t need price caps. They need thinking caps (“Federal Caps Will Let Electric Costs Soar, Critics Say,” April 27).
Let free prices do their work. If they go up for now, it’s an incentive. Power users conserve. Power suppliers build more plants. With enough supply, prices drop. That’s the way prices work in the free world.
Too bad we live in the People’s Republic of California.
W. H. KLINE
Burbank
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* Everyone living in California is now aware of the terrible result of deregulation of the power industry. Rather than the lower prices predicted for consumers by competitive companies entering the market, we discover that California power plants have been purchased by out-of-state corporations that now gouge us while they continue reporting obscene profits for each quarter. Oil companies are in the same bracket, using the flimsiest of excuses for continuing to raise gasoline prices, while reporting excessive profits each quarter.
Is it time for the public to begin a discussion about nationalizing these two industries, which provide vital necessities for everyday living? It’s time to put the power companies and oil and gas companies on notice that there is an alternative solution to their greed.
JERRY SKIBINSKI
Placentia
